Especially in online courses, teamwork requires trust, psychological safety, clarity of expectations, and good communication. Use these strategies to establish a positive and productive working relationship with your teammates in group assignments.

  • Introduce yourselves
     Your teammates bring perspectives, experience, and skills to their work of which you may be unaware. Brief introductions can help establish rapport and add dimension to your discussions.
  • Take on roles
    Assign team members to lead tasks where their strengths can best enhance the team:
    1. Meeting facilitator
    2. Notetaker
    3. Project manager
    4. Deliverables editor
    5. Reporter
    6. Etc.
  • Divide work equitably
     Many teams choose to divide up deliverables, having 1 or 2 teammates complete the written work after the entire group has discussed it. Prevent hurt feelings and enhance a sense of this being a team effort, by tracking who completes what assignments so that no one member does too little—or too much—of the work.
  • Provide peer feedback
         You and your teammates should ask for, and provide, feedback on drafts. Plan to start work a little bit early and to share it with your team so that everybody has a chance to weigh in before it is submitted.
  • Create a communications plan
    Make sure that everybody on your team has shared communication norms, including:
    1. Communications platform
    2. Meeting attendance
    3. Acknowledging receipt of communications
    4. Turnaround on deliverables
    5. Announcing completion of project milestones and assignment submissions.
  • Over-communicate
     Start emails and meetings by previewing the goals you would like to achieve. Include meeting agendas in calendar invitations. Find a platform for informal communication—whether it is Slack, a WhatsApp chat, or a text message group—and keep each other apprised of life events that may cause delays. It may seem like a lot, but clear communication at every step will assuage anxiety and improve your productivity.
  • Be kind
     Encourage your teammates to explore and expand on their ideas, offer constructive criticism, make space for quieter members of your team to speak their minds, and approach your work with a generous outlook and the assumption that like you, the other members of your team are doing the best they can.
  • Check In
     Team performance relies on the health and well being of your teammates. Check in at meetings or through chat to make sure that nobody is feeling over-stressed or overwhelmed. If a member of your team is having a tough time, you may also offer to take on some of their work.

Finally, remember that you have support. If there is ever a time when you feel that your team needs help getting or staying on track, reach out to your course’s teaching team or to MEHP Online staff. We are here to help.


Based on “How Do I Facilitate Effective Group Work?” from the UMass Amherst Center for Teaching and Learning.